ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM

Antonio Carlos Jobim, was a primary force behind the creation of the bossa nova style. Fueled by Jobim’s songs, the bossa nova became an international fad, and jazz musicians jumped on the bandwagon, recording album after album of bossa novas. Jobim is Widely known as the composer of “The Girl from Ipanema”.

Antonio Jobim used to hang out always at Bar Veloso, an open air veranda-style bar where to drink beer, smoke cigarettes, chat with friends, read newspaper and watch pretty girls walk by. A definitely place-to-be in the trendy and artistical Ipanema, a beach neighborhood in South of Rio de Janeiro.

The film (in Portuguese, Orfeu Negro) put a face on a new style of samba that was fresh, romantic and very accessible to jazz hipsters. It was later called bossa nova (or “new wave” or “new groove”). Only a year before (November 1957), Antonio Carlos Jobim (and Newton Mendonca) had released the album Desafinado, featuring this new style of samba, incorporating it with jazz stylings, poetic lyrics sung by João Gilberto, and a 4 on 3 stammering rhythm. Jobim and Luis Bonfa wrote the soundtrack to the motion picture.

Helô Pinheiro was a 15 year old girl back then when she inspired Jobim to compose his classic Garota de Ipanema in 1962.

With Sylvia Telles, Menescal and Marcos Valle.

In 1958, the then-unknown Brazilian singer João Gilberto recorded some of Jobim’s songs, which had the effect of launching the phenomenon known as bossa nova. Jobim’s breakthrough outside Brazil occurred in 1962 when Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd scored a surprise hit with his tune “Desafinado”.

Carlos Jobim with Vinicius de Moraes. The two began collaborating in 1956, when de Moraes, then in his 40s, was looking for someone to put music to his play Orfeu da Conceição (Orpheus of the Conception). De Moraes’ brother-in-law suggested Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim, a young musician and songwriter who had had his first hit two years before. The two met at the Casa Villarino bar in Rio de Janeiro, where de Moraes converted Jobim from beer to whiskey and where, according to one account, Jobim asked “tem dinheirinho?”—would there be a little money?—in the project de Moraes was proposing.